Witcher 3 - Using SpeedTree For Forests

Well this story might interest a few it's an announcement that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be using SpeedTree for it's vast forests.

SpeedTree® to Build Vast Woodlands in Gameplay of Next-Gen The Witcher ® 3

COLUMBIA, SC – In the highly anticipated RPG, The Witcher® 3: Wild Hunt, monster slayer Geralt of Rivia will journey through an open world of unparalleled scale, diversity and realistic ancient woodlands created with the help of SpeedTree® for Games.

Concluding the riveting story of the widely-acclaimed Witcher game franchise from CD Projekt RED, The Witcher 3 is due out in 2014 on PC, PlayStation®4 and Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft. This will be the third title in the series to integrate SpeedTree middleware into the story-driven experience and natural environments that have become a trademark of the franchise.

“We’ve created really stunning ecosystems in The Witcher 3. Vegetation and trees in the game are a really important part of the overall experience,” said Michał Stec, Art Producer at CD Projekt RED. “Without the SpeedTree library, tools and SDK, it wouldn’t have been possible to include this level of detail and interaction with such intricate, woodland environments,” Stec added.

SpeedTree’s advanced SDK and real-time support of next-gen platforms played an important role in developing the expansive and open world of The Witcher 3, where creatures and characters interact with vast natural surroundings seemingly at will. “SpeedTree provided precise modeling and randomization tools to build the unique look we wanted for our massive forests,” noted Stec. “With The Witcher 3 set in an open world that will be about 35 times larger than Witcher 2, SpeedTree middleware greatly facilitated development and made the environments look really complete.”

SpeedTree developer IDV shared the company’s delight with CD Projekt RED’s implementation in The Witcher 3. “Our early involvement with next-gen platforms allowed us to provide the CD Projekt RED development team with the right tools at the right time,” said IDV President Michael Sechrest, “We’re looking forward to the release of the The Witcher 3 to showcase SpeedTree’s expanded capabilities, particularly on the new consoles.”

"We’re looking forward to the release of the The Witcher 3 to showcase SpeedTree’s expanded capabilities, particularly on the new consoles."

So it isn't that they weren't using it before (weren't they?), but that they can do more with it. Presumably the faster compute and better memory capabilities of the new platforms helps with the variety. (I remember back when NWN2 told you to limit the variety of tree types in an area to no more than 4 because of performance issues.)

Originally Posted by kalniel
They used it in The Witcher 2 as well, fyi.

Didn't know that.

If the forest outside of Floatsam was built using SpeedTree technology I see no reason to be skeptical.

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I'd just like to interject here and point out that I'm not going to say anything to spoil the mood, Chief. I'll just float here and watch. Don't mind me, just sitting here, floating and watching, that's me.

"Kevin Meredith: Our favorite example is the first Witcher game, by CD Projekt, which came out in 2007 and made outstanding use of SpeedTree version 4, with lots of dark and foreboding forests of procedural trees. But for Witcher 2, CD Projekt got to use SpeedTree v5, a major rewrite of the software that enabled hand-drawing of trees and individual branch placement and editing. As you’ll see if you play Witcher 2, they made great use of the new features, for example with branches carefully placed so that the monsters could actually climb down them convincingly to attack the hero."

Originally Posted by zahratustra
You really shouldn't try to be ironic Ihaterpg. You don't have the head for it.

It's funny you push the blindness up to defend so bad comments of their future game, omg. I don't know if I made some irony or not, but you can easily imagine I don't care of your writing advice… not more of your opinion on me.

But push it to the personal insult that's pathetic and just show you have nothing to answer but pointless crap to throw. And spare me the comment about the use of crap word to answer such small post.

I have no idea what "pushing the blindness up" means but let's see which one of your valuable contributions I was referring to… Ah yes, you have declared that Witcher 3 will be inferior because they use Speedtree… Well, fuck me, was that any reason to go pathetic on you?

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)